It is not a requirement that an ornithologist be a good man in a fight but, as fate would have it, Michael knew one.
Back in the day, a quarter century ago, the U.S. Department of Energy announced its desire to build the Strom Thurmond Nuclear Materials Processing Plant on an as yet unexploited branch of a large impoundment called Par Pond at the Savannah River Site, near Aiken. Few of the nation’s defense experts thought it was a good idea, but Strom did and that alone made it something of a fait accompli. Until Greenpeace got the idea to hire Michael to lead the fight against it. An assignment like that was ideal for Michael because he was one of those young men who welcomed long odds as a way to test the curve of the possible and help focus the mind.
Against all expectations he made it thinkable, from Charlotte to Atlanta, that building another big nuclear plant at SRS might not be a good idea. There were already solvents in the Tuscaloosa aquifer and radioactive cesium in the river bass. The Talking Heads were making fun of the place in a popular song, and editorial cartoonists were making fun of Strom and the government, posing them in lawn chairs with radiation-belching cooling towers in the background, and three-headed turtles in the foreground. Michael, to his credit, had put together a modern guerilla media campaign and had come much closer than anybody expected to tipping the balance against building the huge plant.
Still, it’s hard to take on old power and he thought it his chances were slipping away. But then he got a call from Promise Tillson, a woman as old as the Senator who rang him up at 6:15 a.m. and began pleading with him to help save a woodcock.
“A what?” he asked.
“A woodcock, the Congaree woodcock. It’s a bird.”
And that’s the problem with creating big buffers around government nuclear plants to hide them from shoppers and motorists. The flying fauna ignore the razor-wired fences and, as Promise explained, there was only once place left in the world where the Congaree woodcock could nest with any success. And that was right splat where Strom wanted his new monument.
Michael stayed on his phone in his bathrobe until nearly noon that day trying to find a scientist who would back Promise’s story up. Four did. But only one had the courage to say that he’d talk to the press about it.
His name was Colonel Stanton P. Devard and he was a biology professor at the Citadel in Charleson. He taught Bio 408. Ornithology. The Colonel knew his birds and as part of his oath to his country and the historic military college, he was committed to being square with what he knew about what he taught.
Yes, it was true what Promise Tillson said about the Congaree woodcock, said Colonel Devard.
“People should know.”
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